Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/176

136 treachery against their enemies these officers now add treason to their allies. They had led the Yunkers into this trap. Now the trap is closing, and the officers abandon them.

First to rally their wits, the Yunkers begin to cry out, "Our officers! Where are our officers?" No answer to their cries. "Damn the cowards!" they shout. "They have deserted us."

Rage at this betrayal fuses the Yunkers together. Their best tactics would be to hold the stairway, but they shrink away from it. Red vengeance crouching at the foot fills them with dread. It will not let them move forward. They fall back into a thick walled room with a narrow entrance. There, like rats clustering in a hole, they wait the onrush of the Red tide that may come rising up the stairway, flooding the corridors, drowning them out.

To some of these young fellows, sprung from the middle-class, this is a doubly tragic ending. Death at the hands of peasants and workers with whom they have no quarrel! But, caught in this camp of the Counter-Revolution, they must share its doom. They know how richly they deserve it. This sense of guilt unnerves them. Their guns fall from their hands. They slink down on chairs and tables, moaning, their eyes fixed on the entrance thru which the Red tide is to come crashing in. They listen for the swirl of the first wave flinging itself on the stairway; hammering on the door.